MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

3/18 Brotherly love in Texas

Greg Maddux said it was hard for him to leave the Cubs organization but he couldn’t pass up the chance to work with his brother, Mike, who is the pitching coach with the Rangers.

“We’ve always wanted to be on the same team and we could never do it playing but we have it worked out now,” he said. “I know before I took the job with the Cubs three years ago, there was some discussion about it and it never really set up right. This time it did.”

Maddux was a special assistant to then Cubs GM Jim Hendry; now he has the same job with the Rangers. Mike Maddux had interviewed for the Cubs managerial job. Did he and Greg talk about Greg possibly being the pitching coach?

“I’m not ready to go all in yet,” Greg said. “It definitely would’ve been a good opportunity. Where his family life was at the time didn’t make sense for him. He’s got his family together again for the first time since he moved to Texas. He didn’t want to lose them again. I think he’ll be a good manager one day. When the time’s right, I think he’ll be good at it. He’ll gain some more experience and knowledge and down the road sometime he’ll be even more of a candidate.”

Did Theo Epstein, Cubs president of baseball operations, talk to Greg about staying?

“I think everybody understood,” Greg said. “When Jim and [scout] Gary Hughes and everybody kind of left, that was kind of my click. The thing here opened up with my brother and it just felt like the right thing to do for me personally and have him help me out doing what I’m doing and maybe I can help him a little, too.”

Greg is doing more coaching than scouting now.

“I enjoy working with the players here, just like I did in Chicago,” he said. “I enjoy being around the coaches, I enjoy learning around the coaches, just like Chicago. It’s pretty much the same thing, just new faces.”

Does he feel he’s still part of the Cubs?

“Always, always, always,” Maddux said. “Chicago’s a huge part of my baseball career. Always. We just got a new house last month and redecorated and there’s a lot of Cubs stuff there. I have a lot of great memories. Absolutely.”

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